earticle

영어

Although service innovation is not a new concept, innovation research in general tends to focus on technological innovation by manufacturing firms. With this view, innovation studies focus on product(e.g., goods) and process(e.g., product systems) innovation, ignoring service innovation and its inherent opportunities. Since major economy has been transformed to service economy, service innovation is considered a new effective way to sustain and gain a competitive advantage. Service innovation is no longer regarded merely as a side activity to product innovation; it has become a main research topic in its own right, accompanied by an increasing focus on services. While the number of service innovation studies has increased dramatically in the past 30 years in international research, few studies have been performed in domestic studies because domestic service innovation research began from the middle of 2000. In addition, there are no comprehensive literature reviews describing the evolution of service innovation research in both international and domestic studies because of the heterogeneities of service industry and multidiscipline characteristics of service innovation studies. To bridge this research gap, the purpose of this paper is to perform an extensive literature review and synthesis to enable a critical review of extant research on service innovation and trace its evolution, which will establish a foundation for further studies. By reviewing 169 articles (136 international papers; 33 domestic papers) published between 2000 and 2014 (in past 15 years), primarily in leading service, innovation and management information systems journals, this study analyzes the progression of service innovation research according to the four aspects such as number of studies, topics, methodologies and target industries. Overall, the view of service innovation has evolved, from a complement of traditional product innovation to a multidimensional, all-encompassing concept that entails several functions, both within and outside the firms. The results showed that domestic research still stays at the formation phase of service innovation studies although international research is in the maturity or multidimensional phase. We found increasing recent activ- ities pertaining to service innovation, resulting from the increasing interest in services innovation across various industries and the links of new topics to the service innovation concept in both international and domestic studies. However, the main focus of service innovation research showed a different propensity between international and domestic studies: the former mainly focuses on a much more diversified pattern, emphasizing the linkages between service innovation and business strategy while the latter mainly focuses on the service innovation process(system) and service design. In addition, there are many case studies in domestic studies while many empirical studies in international studies. Domestic studies should increases the understanding of the interplay between service innovation and product innovation within manufacturing firms. Furthermore, rather than focusing on intrinsic distinctions between service innovation and product innovation, researchers should strive to develop and conceptualize service innovation in domestics studies. The present research also provides useful implications for practitioners. First, this study contributes to expand the current understanding of service innovation research by performing an extensive literature review. Second, tracing and comparing the progression and trends of service innovation research between international and domestic studies, this study showed the similarities and differences between them, which provide practical guidance on future research directions and research agenda. Third, this study performed literature review establishing the analysis system in the initial stage and using them to analyze articles, which is leading to explain the research review of service innovation more systematically and objectively. Finally, this study suggests the domestic researchers their future interests and topics of service innovation research.